The Last of the Lucky / You Can't Always Get What You Want - SWEDISH EYES ON THE A-CHANGING CUBA! MY LAST SIGNED COPY!

"In their exhibition The Last of the Lucky Klara KÄLLSTRÖM and Thobias FÄLDT present a research-based and multifaceted body of work.
With critical eyes on the current political and economical landscape they work almost like investigative journalists in the exhibition. They find connections, stories and power games in the eye of the storm. In the first room they show works that focus on what role photography has played, and still plays, on the way the western world views Cuba and Cuban history. In the inner room the investigation continues and they connect Cuba’s history with contemporary stories and dramaturgies. As the storyteller for the exhibition the artists have engaged the writer Johannes WAHLSTRÖM to write the essay You Can’t Always Get What You Want, in which he reveals some of the narratives behind KÄLLSTRÖM and FÄLDT’s works.

The first time I was introduced to KÄLLSTRÖM and FÄLDT was almost 10 years ago. It was at the release of the very last issues of the magazine Tromb, named Tromb is Dead. In this issue both of them had images published, and Fäldt had the role as the issue’s image editor. During the production of what would become an investigation on Swedish media houses and its ownership structures the editors found out about their own organisation’s problems with irregularities, which in the end led to bankruptcy and discontinuation of the magazine. I have a feeling that this might have been the rst indication of what direction Källström and Fäldt’s forthcoming work should take on. Ever since they have worked with analysing, investigating and framing the underlying narratives and histories in the intersections of contemporary political, economical and medial events.

The Last of the Lucky / You Can't Always Get What You Want

In the spring of 2014 Klara KÄLLSTRÖM and Thobias FÄLDT, as well as countless before them, traveled from the U.S. via Mexico to Cuba in the spirit of visiting the country before it was irrevocably changed. They had brought along analogue camera film that they feared was damaged by the x-rays of the U.S. Security control, hence they started to search for new film in Havana.

Fortunately for them, in Havana, they met a man who turned out to be one of Fidel CASTRO’s former private photographers. He took them to a camera shop, where despite the general lack of photographic equipment in the city, there were three rolls of film bearing the inscription 'Lucky'. The salesman handed the rolls over and said: 'these are the last rolls of Cuba'.

Soon after the rolls had been exposed, U.S. president Barack OBAMA declared that the trade embargo against Cuba would be lifted. Since then film is no longer a rarity in Cuba, but what Klara and Thobias did not know at the time was that the photographs from the 'Lucky' rolls would unintentionally capture a last glimpse of something entirely different.
In the spring of 2016, after a visit to Cuba by president OBAMA, a number of events set in motion an irriversible change. This is compiled by author Johannes WAHLSTRÖM as a historical documentation, albeit with the perspective turned back towards the U.S.

Excerpt from The Last of the Lucky / You Can’t Always Get What You Want by Johannes Wahlström:
Ever since the Cuban revolution the Clandestine services of the United States had demonstrated incredible stamina and resourcefulness in facilitating the fall of Cuban socialism.
But neither a military invasion nor reportedly over 600 assassination attempts against Cuban president Fidel CASTRO had produced the desired result. In order to endeavor a di erent approach to regime change in Cuba, the 'Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act' was adopted. The law, signed by then president CLINTON in March of 1996 provided the U.S. government with an open legal and economic framework to bring about 'democracy and market economy in Cuba'.
In the winter of 2014 then president OBAMA announced that the United States would begin a process of normalization with Cuba. This process, made possible by the above mentioned law, was based on the idea that if a violent overthrow of the Cuban regime was not achievable, then perhaps Cuban socialism could be undone by exposing it to the superiority of the American way of life.

In the summer of 2015 the diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba were reinstalled after having been frozen for over half a century. This 'Cuban Thaw', as it was branded in the newspapers of New York and Washington, was described as the beginning of the end of Cuban socialism and the reintroduction of the island into the 'global' economy, politics and culture.
With the embargo slowly being lifted from Cuba, the newspapers pointed to the ailing leadership of the CASTRO brothers as a guarantee that the war of ideas with the renegade island would soon be won.
By allowing American citizens to travel to Cuba, by exposing the islanders to American culture, values and dollars, the Cubans would finally rise up against their ageing disconnected elites, their censoring media, their introvert culture, and demand change. That was how the Cuban revolution was supposed to finally be swallowed by the United States of America.
In the winter of 2015 the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. published a description of one of the attempts to topple the Cuban regime with the help of the 'Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act'. The essence of the project was to circumvent censorship in Cuban media by creating a dissenting Cuban social network.

Exactly 20 years after the adoption of the 'Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act' by president CLINTON, U.S. president Barack OBAMA visited Cuba in march of 2016. This was the first time since the Cuban Revolution that a U.S. president visited the Island, and as such it was much publicized by the newspapers of New York and Washington. At that time presidents of the United States were regularly received as rock stars in many Western market economies, the Cubans were therefore expected to likewise be much impressed by the visit, perhaps inspiring them to rise up against their own regime.

A few days later Havana would witness what the newspapers would describe as the epitome of global culture, a free concert by rock band The Rolling Stones. The concert, featuring the 1969 chart hit Honky Tonk Women, was bankrolled by a corporate lawyer from the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao. The banker, Gregory ELIAS, claimed to have paid the 7 million U.S. dollars required to arrange the concert from his own pocket, complaining that the group had nonetheless refused to play his favorite song Far Away Eyes. The symbolic importance of the Rolling Stones in Havana was in the newspapers of New York and Washington likened to the appearance of the Scorpions with Wind of Change in Moscow just months before the fall of the Soviet Union. This, the newspapers were convinced, would be the final nail in the coffin of the ailing CASTRO Brothers and Cuban socialism.

Meanwhile, as attention was directed at what was supposed to be the imminent fall of the Cuban regime, a little known senator from the state of Vermont in the United States took the lead in opinion polls for the presidential nomination to the governing U.S. Democratic party. The polls took the New York and Washington newspapers by less than positive surprise, since they seemed to show the senator beating the establishment candidate CLINTON II in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections later that year.
At the same time the main candidate for the Republican Party, BUSH III seemed to be loosing the nomination against a real estate tycoon known for promoting U.S. financial protectionism and political isolationism. The gravity of the situation could not be overestimated by the aforementioned newspapers, as the Republican Party at that moment was the only established opposition party in the United States.

With cruise liners once again mooring the Havana harbor, U.S. artists gearing up for further concerts, and U.S. airlines taking ight reservations to the Island, the American spring of 2016 seemed to bring much anticipated change to the Western hemisphere, but in a somewhat di erent manner than projected by the New York and Washington newspapers." (text by Erik Betshammar as intrduction in the exhibition at Galleri BOX, source: http://galleribox.se/cmsBox/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GalleriBOX_Kallstrom_Faldt_booklet.pdf)

About the photographers Klara KÄLLSTRÖM & Thobias FÄLDT:
Klara KÄLLSTRÖM, Thobias FALDT and Johannes WAHLSTRÖM work in the fieeld of photography, text, installation, publishing and film. Their work focus on the production of knowledge, exploring media-issues, historical narratives and how political events are depicted and perceived.
KÄLLSTRÖM, FALDT and WAHLSTRÖM have for the past years produced a number of works relating to places undergoing paradigmatic changes where they seek to activate historical layers, notions of uncertainty and chance in order to draw attention to the gap between what is visible and what is told.